Welcome to National Poetry Month, 2016! We’re celebrating all month long. Each day we will bring you a poem we love–a selection from one of our published or forthcoming collections.
Today’s featured poet is Brandi George, author of Gog.
HERO
.
All words collapse.
Calypso. Sun. A garden
weaving. I invoke
him: Cloud glove. Tree foot.
Blue grave. If he—
she—is a red bird’s neck,
then I am betrayed.
I am a grave,
betrayed cloud,
the sunny garden
blue Calypso
weaver of his collapsed neck.
Red bird: If
I invoke words—
a tree, glove, foot—
she is all.
She’s Calypso,
but he’s a cloud,
and I’m a red bird’s neck.
If invoked, he betrays
because all words weave
graves: tree, glove,
sun, feet, blue, tree,
a garden collapsed.
This poem was originally published in DIAGRAM.
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Brandi George grew up in rural Michigan. Poems from her first collection of poetry, Gog (Black Lawrence Press, 2015) appeared in Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, Ninth Letter, Columbia Poetry Review, and The Iowa Review. She has been awarded residencies at Hambidge Center for the Arts and the Hill House Institute for Sustainable Living, Art & Natural Design, and she attended the Sewanee Writer’s Conference as a Tennessee Williams Scholar.